US spies in Afghanistan are clueless, says intelligence chief

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America’s deputy chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan has issued a damning indictment of the work of US spy agencies, calling them clueless and out of touch with the Afghan people.

Major General Michael Flynn described US spies as “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced... and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers”.

The bleak assessment of the intelligence community’s role in the eight-year-old war came in a report issued by the Center for New American Security, a US think tank. It comes less than